I’ve been trying to understand the Tea Party Movement. Sounds like a lot of angry people who want to get the government out of their lives and cut both taxes and the deficit. Nothing wrong with that — although one does wonder where they were in the Bush years. Never mind. I’m sure like all such protest movements the Tea Partiers will get their 10 to 20 percent of the vote. But should the Tea Partiers actually aspire to break out of that range, attract lots of young people and become something more than just entertainment for Fox News, I have a suggestion:

Become the Green Tea Party.

I’d be happy to design the T-shirt logo and write the manifesto. The logo is easy. It would show young Americans throwing barrels of oil imported from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia into Boston Harbor.

The manifesto is easy, too: “We, the Green Tea Party, believe that the most effective way to advance America’s national security and economic vitality would be to impose a $10 “Patriot Fee” on every barrel of imported oil, with all proceeds going to pay down our national debt.”

They weren’t around protesting during the Bush years BECAUSE THE TEA PARTY IS REPUBLICANS. They don’t care about the deficit. They care that a Democrat (and a black “Muslim,” to boot), is in the White House. They don’t care about fiscal restraint, they care that a Democrat is in the White House. They don’t, as some foolishly pretend, care about the Wall Street excesses. Certainly Cenk Uyger is not the only one who has noticed that the tea party bubbas could all be shipped to protest HCR, but the big money boys aren’t running the buses to protest Wall Street. They care that there is a Democrat in the White House.

And those crowds of angry white old people screaming “keep government out of my medicare” and waving signs of “Drill, baby, drill?” They sure as hell don’t care about the environment and are not going to become some sort of “Green Tea Party.”

The militias and shortwave nuts weren’t out there during Bush Sr’s years screaming about and training against the imminent soshullist / Russian / UN invasion of the USA, either; that started when Clinton came into office.

It’s good that the light bulb went off over Cenk Uyger’s head; he was among the crowd flirting with the teabaggers a couple of months back.

There is no hope for Tom Friedman. People who live palatial compounds such as himself are probably not the best equipped to understand America’s different tribes. Anyone who doesn’t see that the teabaggers are the perpetually enraged, viciously racist Republican base, is too stupid to be listened to.

I think you are missing the point of the column. The key word is “if.”. IF they were interested they would consider these proposals. Freidman recognizes that the Teabaggers have no interest in actual solutions.

I was under the impression there was a passionate movement about environmental problems in this country, only that they had relatively coherent beliefs and were concerned with actually implementing solutions. My mistake.

WASHINGTON — Long-awaited climate change legislation was put on hold by its authors Saturday when a dispute over immigration politics and Senate priorities threatened to unravel a bipartisan effort that took months of work.
…
Voicing regrets, Sen. John Kerry said Saturday he is postponing the much anticipated unveiling of comprehensive energy and climate change legislation scheduled for Monday. The Massachusetts Democrat made his announcement after a key partner in drafting the bill, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, threatened to withhold support if Senate Democratic leaders push ahead first with an immigration bill.
…
Graham is angry that Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is considering that. Legislation to overhaul immigration laws and grant legal status to millions of long term immigrants unlawfully in the country could create problems for Republicans in the midterm elections. It’s a top priority for Hispanic voters – and most Republicans are opposed. Reid’s idea amounts to a “cynical political ploy,” Graham asserted.

I’d be happy to design the T-shirt logo and write the manifesto. The logo is easy. It would show young Americans throwing barrels of oil imported from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia into Boston Harbor.

Venezuela sells the U.S. oil, helps poor U.S. communities with heating oil, and their government hasn’t been anywhere nearly as repressive and consorting with death squads as Colombia next door, a government we give massive amounts of aid to.

Not that I expect the Mustache of Moronic Fraud and Dumb Overstatement to understand.

Ya think? The baggers can protest about their purity, their deep concern, their grassroots. Simply ask when they took to the streets and that ends the conversation. I take great pleasure in stereotyping, it is great fun, and makes my girlfriend laugh. But stereotyping baggers is about as challenging as stereotyping the parking lot vendors at a dead show or the participants at at womyn’s writing workshop. The die is cast, you can picture the scene by the title. At least the other two have integrity. The baggers on the other hand are so confused I imagine them drinking from the toilet and pis-s-ing in the sink. Cenk is right, they are dupes, dumb-asses, and just plain scared. The whole problem is their power in the debate is wildly outside their percentage of the populace. Of course I have no illusion why this is the case. They are the potemkin village of the powerful. Bullsh*t cardboard cutouts along the road designed for the tv cameras. After the caravan has passed, they are left to rot in the rain. Unfortunately just enough in the media and in the general populace buy into the distraction, while the whole time the playwrights are stealing everything out the backdoor.

He is playing the game we are all playing…..
if you have any contact with tp-ers, they
demand to be taken seriously, just like a kid who
is grounded and got his feelings hurt after the parent said what they really thought.

@El Cid: Graham is lying. This opposition has nothing to do with immigration [well, very little]. It has lots to do with blocking the climate bill.

Little Lindsey can cry about immigration if he wants to but we don’t have to believe him. We are free to think that he wants to block Obama at every turn and wants to serve his earth-polluting, deep-pocketed masters.

Unless, of course, he actually is smart enough to realize that when we get to immigration reform, the Repubican Party will be exposed for what it is. He might be smarter than I give him credit for.

Mollifying these fools, as Arizona has just done, is the best thing that can happen to Democrats.

‘Zona is about to become as Democratic as California because the sleeping giant Latino vote will be provoked to self-defense. Another Phrryic victory for the ‘Baggers, kind of like GWB’s landslide elections.

Demographics are a bitch; a slow moving, crushing tide. Kind of like a glacier or a tidal wave.

So, can we also hope for the creation of the English Breakfast Tea Party (advocates for returning us to colonial status), the Earl Gray Tea Party (deranged Patrick Stewart fans), the Chamomile Tea Party (arguing for greater acceptance of alternative medicine), etc. ?

oh and dumping barrels of oil into boston harbor? could there be anything further from the definition of “green?” what a maroon.

No kidding. I grew up in Boston in the 80s and 90s, during the period when through great effort, the harbor was cleaned up. I’m pretty sure Bostonians would like to avoid having oil-soaked seagulls washing up on the local beaches.

And now supremely dumb interviewer Bob Schieffer is asking Larry Summers why the White House has so badly offended President Lindsey that Mr. South Carolina Bipartisan Hero has withdrawn his precious support.

That is such typical Tommy bullshit– right down to the tin ear for metaphor! Throwing barrels of oil into the harbor would be an act of pollution more than protest. Only the world is flat mythologized would be such a maroon.

I guess it started way back when — late ’60s? — but certainly by the time Clinton became president, there was a core rock-solid belief by “conservatives” that Democrats lack legitimacy. They are not “real” Americans. (We see this now, openly & using pretty much those very words, from the likes of deep thinkers on the right like Palin.)

Clinton was the best Republican president of my lifetime, fwiw. The way he brought down spending & “reformed” welfare & deregulated Wall Street — a very Republican presidency imo. (& look what it got him! During a decades’ long slump in leadership in this country, the best of a bad bunch gets impeached! In America: Black is White!)

Remember how stirred up a rabid minority of Americans were by Clinton? & now, probably even more so, by Obama? Yes, race is definitely a (very ugly) factor, but at the core of things, these poor deluded bastards think that Democrats are fundamentally unamerican and that only Republicans have true legitimacy in government. Given that Republicans only use government for their own ends, always putting their party ahead of the country and its population, given that Republicans don’t care in the least about either people or the world, given that many of their actions are illegal, unconstitutional and wrong by any measure (torture anyone?), this should be a no-brainer: these people are not the best America can do. They’re not even close. During the American Revolution, these people would have run to Canada in droves, pledging their allegiance to George III. They have absolutely nothing in common with the Founding Fathers they embrace nor with the founder of their party. They are not America’s friend. But they’ve brainwashed a big swath of hostile, ill-informed people that they’re the only true Americans. It’s all a question of legitmacy.

“This tea party movement is one part Dick Armey and company fake astroturf protest, one part angry McCain and Palin soreloserman, one part abortion clinic protester, one part white nationalist militia movement/gun rights nuts, one part ClusterFox/Glenn Beck brain dead watcher, one part anti-immigration Lou Dobbs/Tom Tancredo fan, one part southern racist that isn’t done fighting the Civil War yet and one part Ron Paul/Libertarian. What could ever go wrong with that special blend of tea?” ~ C’s&L’s, via Digby.

@JGabriel: Also, he was viewed with suspicion before they started publicly questioning his sexuality. Being the name-sponsor of an anti-coal bill with John Kerry (and Lieberman, who as much as we hate him is still just one of them New York Jews to a lot of Bubbas) would probably be the end of his career.

and immigration is such a blatant flip-flop for his BFF McCain that even David Gregory might notice, so start muddying the waters now.

I went to a counter protest to a Teabagger event at my county courthouse yesterday afternoon. About 300-400 of them to about 100 of us from Beaver County Blue. It was basically a bunch of blue haired women and pot bellied good ol’ boys screaming about taxes and soshulism, per usual. I knew a couple of them and went over to talk to them. They were about my age, late 40s to early 50s, and were just puzzled that I was not on their side because they really like me because I helped their kids get grant, scholarships, and low interest loans to go to the large public university for which I work. When I asked if they were willing to give up those loans, grants, scholarships, and the large public university and how funding those aren’t soshulism, they just looked at me completely flustered. Then they said they weren’t against THOSE things but just Obama’s soshulism. When I asked what that meant, they then said it’s welfare and health care for the undeserving. So I slyly said oh, you mean like all those people in Aliquippa (a local town with a large minority and poor population) get and they enthusiastically nodded and said yes! At which point I said so it’s when black people who get government benefits, that’s a problem but it’s fine when you get them, right? All but one, again, enthusiastically agreed. The one who didn’t was frowning, like he knew something was wrong with my framing but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. After that, I will not be accepting any more arguments that the Teabaggers aren’t about racism. That is what underlies ALL of their concerns, regardless of what they or anyone else claims. Period.

As I see it, the Teahadists base their self-image on being “better than” whole groups of other people, who are kept out of competition with arbitrary social rules that have no basis in their actual worth?

In any true meritocracy they would be the honeypot emptiers their natural talents embrace?

They are now threatened with an end to this un-natural order and they wake in the night with the icy fear sweats?

It may not be Instant, but it sounds like Karma.

(Side note: Which, I have discovered, sometimes does exist. I offer the story of Thomas Midgley, Jr

Speaking of not getting it, talking heads all over MTP & This Week scratching their heads over Obama’s shift to immigration reform as a sure way to fail and alienate the American people.

Dems know they’ll fail with any reasonable bill. They know that failure will be swift as they probably won’t succeed in any relevant Senate committee and certainly won’t overcome a filibuster.

This gives Dems the opportunity to do the right thing *and* get 10% or so of guaranteed votes on their side from folks who normally don’t vote in midterm elections in Nevada, Florida, Colorado, California, etc, etc.

Speaking of not getting it, talking heads all over MTP & This Week scratching their heads over Obama’s shift to immigration reform as a sure way to fail and alienate the American people.

Pundits thought immigration was the big sleeper issue in 2006. They thought that because the GOP base were all fired up about it, and media believe the GOP base are the best indicator of “real America”, hence the flat-out worship and promotion of the Tea Parties.

It’s the same goddamn syndrome.

Lou Dobbs is to immigration (2006) as Glenn Beck is to tea parties (2010). They bought Dobbs baloney just like the buy Becks, and thought there was this massive anti-immigration voter wave that never materialized.

Mike Ditka hasn’t lived in Aliquippa for forty years. Nor has he visited any but the dwindling all white neighborhoods in that time. On the other hand, it’s also the hometown of Tony Dorsett ( who I had the pleasure of watching play high school football at my alma mater) and Ty Law, who are often back in town, giving back to the community.

An fine point. One of Friedman’s most annoying tics, most pronounced when he is actually making sense, is the appeal to good-hearted right-wingers, worthy business execs, decent people in the Bush administration, and so on while not refusing to notice, let alone make common cause, with the people who are actually working for the sensible goals he has now belatedly come around to supporting himself. I think it’s of a piece with his conception of himself as the elect’s official opposition and voice of conscience. This was very noticeable when, after his phase of bloodthirsty enthusiasm for the war in Iraq, when he began dimly to see that it wasn’t going to be all pie in the sky, he would occasionally voice some criticisms which–surprise, surprise–resembled what the DFHs and hated French had been saying all along. But these were all addressed, in the voice of a courtier, to the very people responsible for the disaster. The great swathes of the electorate who were against the mess, those who had questioned the wisdom of the undertaking, were and are axiomatically excluded from consideration.

I want to apologize to everyone for the inadvertant re-use of the observation that Friedman is a tin eared “maroon.” I was posting from my iphone, knee deep in mud, pursuing my nieces and my child through a marsh we call “dilaptica” and I posted without reading all the other comments first.

jwb: FDR had America Firsters to deal with &, of course, Father Coughlin, who paved the way for Limbaugh & Beck with his hate rhetoric over the airwaves. There were also certain media interests that were most definitely anti-FDR. But as far as I know, the very legitimacy of an entire party was not called into play until much later. I don’t know for sure, but I think it really gained traction during the anti-war protests & the leftists of the late 60s & early 70s who were willing to use violence to shake the status quo.

If you feel that our best moment as a country came during the FDR years (which is my own view), it’s particularly galling that the “meme” of Democrats being something less than true Americans has taken such root in our discourse. America did what it did during those years in spite of Republicans, not because of them.

It’s just more evidence that the ‘stache’s first sentence is correct; he still doesn’t understand. The Tea Party is a bunch of people who have been convinced that if anythng changes, their lives will change for the worse; they’re reactionaries. Therefore, they are against any and all Obama White House reforms. And since environmentalism, by definition, involves sacrifice–it means adopting measures of conservation that are not currently in place–their knee-jerk reaction would be automatic opposition to that, too. They don’t want to stop imports of oil; they want to stop anything that would stop imports of oil, even if it involves switching to a greener form of energy. Their very movement screams antienvironmentalism.

“people who want to get the government out of their lives and cut both taxes and the deficit. Nothing wrong with that”

Someone else got to this before me, but this is the stupidest part. “Nothing wrong with” ideas that violate basic arithmetic & logic? Cut taxes = MORE DEFICIT. Cut deficit = MORE TAXES.

Spending cuts alone aren’t going to do it, even if any were suggested, which none are (except I guess opposition to PPACA which is about 2% of all federal spending and paid for anyway – so “cutting” it would have no effect on the deficit).

And yet this is the part that Friedman thinks has “nothing wrong with it”. Sorry, that is the core belief of the group, and it is patently wrong, idiotic, childish, and sort of pathetic.

Cole, you shithead. The Tea Party people of whom I’m one are not Republicans, but usually Independents, shithead, And I cared about the deficits under witless clown Bush, shithead, just like I do under this witless clown Obama, who is even dumber than Bush in his relentless takeover of individual liberties.

Maybe if you weren’t such a whore, you’d check out Pew who notices that the generic Dem pct. went DOWN from 51% to 46% in the last six months while the generic GOP went UP from 39% to 45% during the same period. But you’re a whore and so are in deep denial about your sleazy shithead moral leprosy. I read you as though you’re a comic strip, only a really stupid one that is dumber than Doonesbury.

The Tea Party people of whom I’m one are not Republicans, but usually Independents

Independent = Republican ashamed to say that they voted for Bush. Twice.

And I cared about the deficits under witless clown Bush

No, you didn’t. Every last one of you fuckers was cheering on the Bombing Of The Brown People until the bills came due in 2008. Don’t embarrass yourself by saying shit like this.

just like I do under this witless clown Obama, who is even dumber than Bush

Translated: I am now horribly embarrassed by my two votes for Bush, and am even angrier because a blackity-black soshulist is in office, so I made a sign and yell in public a lot!

A long time ago yelling in public while carrying a sign used to be considered the act of a lunatic, but thankfully the Dirty Fucking Hippies who protested against Vietnam made it a socially acceptable tactic. Congratulations for having at least enough brainpower to learn from the best.

@debit: Well, there’s the liberty to slowly die because you’re poor and got in an accident or contracted a disease. And Obama’s working on ending the freedom to keep the gays out of the military. Just a few examples.

I’m sure daveinboca and millions of other outraged independent tea’ers would have been marching in the streets in 2006 if only their Republican and Fox organizers had started their grassroots protests then. They opted to wait until 2009 for some reason.

I am a tea partier though I have never been to a rally. Let me attempt to explain my point of view.

I believe in opportunity, prosperity, self-determination, peace, love and joy for everyone without regard to race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. I believe that free-market capitalism and a smaller dose of government services and taxation is more effective in achieving it than an economy with more restrictions and more command and control from the center as well as more taxation and income redistribution.

Notice I did not say ‘no government services or taxation’. Some is appropriate. We can debate where the line should be. But tea party foes like to say stuff like ‘if you fire departments then you must be a socialist because fire departments are a public service’. The tea party movement did not spring up because fire departments, public education, student loans, and social security pensions existed. The movement was a response to the aggressive doubling down on all fronts that has occurred since the Obama administration gave the green light to the democratic congress.

I believe that when individuals make choices with their own time and money the outcome is better than when some central body takes their money and (and by association the time they spent earning it) decides how to spend it for them. Sure some people make poor decisions with their own time and money. In the same manner, governments sometimes make poor decisions with the time and money they are charged with. I believe that on aggregate the better outcome comes from individuals making choices. The reason is that they are closer to the outcome; they can sense it sooner and self-correct sooner. A giant government behemoth with it’s head far removed from it’s hands can not react and change course quickly. Also, self-interest exists in human beings. Self-interest of public officials works against the interest of the individuals in the public. But self-interest of individuals in the public works for them.

During the last 120 years there have been a large number of national experiments with large government sectors. On the extreme edge you’ve had communist countries with all-encompassing public sectors. These have ALL failed. Yes, even the stragglers like cuba and north korea are failures. China is nominally a communist country which has boomed only since it opened itself up to private property and enterprise. There are a large number of social democractic states in europe that have not failed. The standard of living is high in many of them. People point to those and say: ‘see, that is what I want. It works there.’ My answer is that it just hasn’t failed there yet. This is something that we can debate.

I wonder why an american individual (with an yearning for european style social democracy) would want to give up his resources and put them in the hands of a bureaucrat rather than freely associate with others and create the desired good in some private association. I mean, if you want to provide cheap healthcare to your neighbors you are free to do it out of your own resources. Why is it that instead of doing your project privately by free association with others, you want government to do your project? Isn’t it because you want to control the actions and resources of others and you can only achieve that through governmental authority? If so, you sir, are a thief. If you can’t convince your neighbor to join you in your enterprise of his own free will then it is probably not worth doing. You have no business forcing him to do it via governmentally applied duress.

To summarize, I want to be free to live my life in peace with my own resources and I’ll let you live your life in peace with yours. I did not strongly protest taxation and government services when they were less than 20% of gdp but I am now because this current president/congress are going too far. I was not happy with the level of spending under Bush either but it had not reached a tipping point until the big bailouts that occurred just before the last election.

In my opinion, the government should have let the banking system, wall street, chrysler, and gm crash. The individuals who invest in and control and loaned to those institutions should have been allowed to reap the harvest of their decisions.

Bush passed the Patriot Act and authorized wiretapping without a warrant. Obama did what exactly? An individual mandate for healthcare? Bzzztt… that was Romney’s idea, considered the conservative solution to the healthcare crisis and endorsed by Republicans across the board in the 90s.

You losers will probably vote Republican again too, even as they call for yet another unfunded war with Iran.

@reid: Well, there’s the loss of freedom to carry guns in parks…oh, right. I got nothing.

Hey, remember how Obama was going to take all our guns away, so “Buy now before it’s too late!” Yeah, the gun shops and pawn shops cleaned up like bandits on that one. I’m willing to bet they were the ones who started the rumor.

…[I]t’s time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America.
…
When they’re in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they’re out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all — indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can.
…
When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government’s authority and capacity to run the country. And it’s been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.
…
This long assault has gone into overdrive since Obama’s inauguration, as the rhetoric has ratcheted up from overheated to perfervid.
…
We’ve reached the point where you can’t go a week without hearing some prominent right wing leader calling for outright sedition — an immediate and defiant populist uprising against some legitimate form of government authority.

It’s in the Constitution that the people have a right to rise up against the government of liberals and Democrats, with particular public zeal to do so against the black ‘uns.

And I want to see all the Teabagger photos from the protests that must have occurred (but not reported by the “liberal media”) when Bush and the Republicans passed Medicare Part D and didn’t pass the funding for it.

It is arguably the biggest debt bomb of the last decade, but I don’t remember a Tea Party movement forming out of that legislation. Still, Daveinboca says they were out there so I’ll wait with baited breath for the pictures of Bush and Cheney in matching Mao suits.

Didn’t Rod Dreher come up with the same expression? I think I read about it yesterday, after Doug’s post on Dreher’s relativism.

And yes, why are there no angry townhalls demanding the heads of the big banks? Oh, I know, Fannie and Freddie caused the whole crisis, Fannie and Freddie are administered by Chris Dodd (crook), Chuck Schumer (Jew) and Barney Frank (fag). Damned minorities and their subsidized affirmative action homes.

These teabaggers are country music fans: they long for a return to simple times depicted in Norman Rockwell. The era of bartering for doctors with livestock and cherry pie. An era long gone, but you find it on the country music stations.

A lot of people are so disturbed by the modern world that they want to go back, deep into their fantasies about what life should be like. It’s childish “magical thinking” that demonstrates their stunted emotional and intellectual growth. The delusion is “Mayberry”, which never existed even in 50s North Carolina.

No surprise that the majority (if not 100%) of the teabaggers are also fundamentalist Christians, a faith that requires a suspension of disbelief and magical thinking beyond the wildest sci-fi author.

@geg6: I’ve got family in New Brighton, and spend every Christmas up there (driving from Dallas with two cats, because I’m insane). I heard the n-word more in one evening up there than I have in almost 18 years in Texas combined, and that’s including a few years watching football in a sports bar as the token white guy at the table. When you watch the economy go where it’s gone in New Brighton and in Beaver Falls, a lot of people go looking for somebody to blame, and the Teabaggers offer them that.

Also equal to the local friends and neighbors who claim they aren’t ideological but rather “vote for the best candidate”. It is damn funny to me that somehow that “best candidate” always seems to be Republican.

From what I see, the Tea Party is not so much Republicans vs Dems. The driving force is race. Not so much anger at a black president (though Obama provides a convenient focus that helps concentrate their rage), but at the TP’ers belief that liberal/Democratic policies tend to redistribute towards people of color.

A great indicator of the fundamental racism of the Tea Partiers is their frequent complaint (echoed in the RememberNovember video, and elsewhere) that Obama and the Dems “ignore the will of the people.” They can count votes, they know they lost the election – what they’re really saying is that all those non-white people who voted for Obama and the Dems shouldn’t really count.

These people’s “whiteness” to them is a sort of property right, a right that entitles them, and only them, legitimacy, authenticity and authority. Obama does not possess this property right, and so he is a usurper of power. Blacks and latinos and gays receiving government largess, frightens them because their property right is rendered valueless. And then they have nothing else – they don’t have skills or ingenuity or intellect. So they yell and gnash their teeth. I’ve said it before, but just read the Jason Compson section of the Sound and the Fury to understand the psyche of a Teabagger.

Friedman is soooo jealous of Al Gore. His pathetic attempts to usurp the title of “Mr. Green” from Gore get more humorus as the years go by. Is he waiting for permission to design a tea shirt? Or does he need a corporate sponsor.

On the topic of tea party grievances: Some of the comments to Balko’s observation about the “what we want is OK, what you want is fucking evil” crowd make me wonder how many of those people even read Reason. I mean, really, there’s people taking to Hit’n’Run to bitch in favor of more restrictive immigration enforcement? Do you see teetotalers posting on BeerAdvocate?

@Splitting Image: Good of you to do that legwork. Sounds like your typical, principled libertarian: “Please, oh please, save me from those furriners! Do whatever you want! Oh, and if you could do something about the gays and darkies that have been piling up here, that would be cool, too.” Just guessing about that last part.

I read the first line and laughed. If you don’t already understand that the tea party is a bunch of cranky old white republicans who can’t stand the fact that a black democrat is in office and very popular, you’re an idiot. Friedman then tries to associate this overtly stupid and selfish group with green activism. Even he admits that ths will never happen with these people. His point seem to be that rather than supporting progressive groups politicians that for decades have attempted to implement what he advocates, only the “drill baby drill” teabaggers have the moral authority to save the earth.

@Futile attempt at reason: “In my opinion, the government should have let the banking system, wall street, chrysler, and gm crash. The individuals who invest in and control and loaned to those institutions should have been allowed to reap the harvest of their decisions.”

Yep, that would sure teach them all a lesson. And then the rest of us, even you, would be left in the ruins. But I get the feeling a lot of teabaggers want exactly that; ruin and the anarchy that comes with it. If must fulfill some sort of “survival of the fittest” warped social Darwinist fantasy. Either that or they think they’ll be just fine and everyone else can suffer, the ultimate “fuck you, I got mine.”

Look, you can talk all you want about letting private enterprise take over, how it’s “better” than government somehow, but where’s the proof? Explain to me how it’s good that Haliburton can poison our troops with contaminated drinking water? How KBR can install showers that electrocute and kill our soldiers? How Blackwater can kill innocent civilians with impunity? And tell me how it’s so great that we’re paying them to do all this?

Finally, had government regulations not been gutted, the whole financial collapse and bailout wouldn’t have happened.

I did not strongly protest taxation and government services when they were less than 20% of gdp but I am now because this current president/congress are going too far.

So exactly what percentage set you off? 21% 20.867%? Did you protest when Cheney pissed billions in to a rathole in Iraq? You know the billions that were “lost”. Too far for what? Do you protest all the farm subsidies? The ethanol canard? Bush and the republicans passing the largest unfunded mandate in the history of the US in the medicare drug benefit? My guess is fuck no. I’d bet you were more than happy to tell the dems to GFY during 2002 – 2008 Anyone who started protesting after November of 2008 is a fucking hypocrite period. Case closed. The only question is whether you are protesting the fact Obama is a muslim, kenyan or democrat. Thanks for playing.

LOL! So right, you are. This glibertarian asshole attempts a drive by on BJ to make his serious objectivist point and basically pwns himself. What an idiot. But then I’ve never met a glibertarian that wasn’t.

They care that a Democrat (and a black “Muslim,” to boot), is in the White House. They don’t care about fiscal restraint, they care that a Democrat is in the White House.

Keep pounding it home, John. Over and over again until someone in the media realizes that this isn’t some spontaneous movement peopled by those concerned with fiscal restraint and all the other so-called principled positions that the Tea Party Defenders like to apply to them. This is exactly what you say it is: a bunch of older, apparently middle class white people who are republicans and are pissed that they got whooped in 2006 and 2008.

I don’t know when the media will stop the polling and focus grouping, and glad handling and just tell it like it is: they are a bunch of pissed off conservative republicans who are extremely unhappy that a black democrat is in the White House.

crowds of angry white old CHRISTIAN people screaming “keep government out of my medicare”

Tea Party Jesus is the real leader of the Tea Party.
All that taking back America the judeo-christian nation like our founders intended?
Its a white conservative christian religious grievence movement.

In my opinion, the government should have let the banking system, wall street, chrysler, and gm crash. The individuals who invest in and control and loaned to those institutions should have been allowed to reap the harvest of their decisions.

Given the Bush administration started this I’m glad to hear you were out protesting in September of 2008. I’m happy to know that your principled opposition to the government bailouts started well before Obama took office. Thank you sir. I heard all about the protests taking place by principled republican tea partiers then. Quite a ruckus was made and it certainly got the attention of the Bush administration, who thought twice about what they were doing. I certainly remember ‘ol Hank Paulson and his long winded and thorough detailing of why the bailouts were needed. He spoke at a few tea party rallies as I remember.

and:

I believe in opportunity, prosperity, self-determination, peace, love and joy for everyone without regard to race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. I believe that free-market capitalism and a smaller dose of government services and taxation is more effective in achieving it than an economy with more restrictions and more command and control from the center as well as more taxation and income redistribution.

Yes of course, that is awesome. I’m sure a number of us here would agree with what you said. The problem here is in implementation. Saying I am for it means you are for it, not just when a certain party is in power. And quite frankly there is no way in hell anyone who calls themselves a tea partier can say truthfully this all started before Obama took office, because it didn’t. You may have had principled opposition, fantastic! Then why align yourself with a bunch of fools who have no principles beyond political expediency? You should be just as disgusted with the tea party (bagger) clown show as the rest of us. Also if you truly think that what Obama has done even approaches socialism you are willfully ignorant. And please don’t even start with heath care reform when the American Enterprise Institute and Newt Gringrich for all practical purposes penned the exact plan that was passed way back in the day when Clinton was getting impeach for blow jobs. Frankly if there were principle republicans I might vote for them. But when the vast majority of republicans want the right to tell you how and who you can fuck all while begging for the right to fuck you any way they want, I’ll pass.

@Futile attempt at reason:
Have no idea why the moderator would pick on you, but since I’m reading what you wrote it seems that’s more of the same libertarian victim mentality you eloquently espoused previously. A futile attempt at reasoning with you: You really need to examine your own motives for proudly labeling yourself part of a movement that welcomes frothing pinheads like daveinboca under its umbrella. It’s entirely possible you lack the hateful, racist component that overwhelmingly defines the Tea Party movement along with its laughable disregard for facts of any kind. If that is the case, you need to get out of the Tea Party movement and press your philosophical case with a group that won’t drag you into the gutter.

Letting the @Futile attempt at reason:
Letting big auto crash is just a glib knee jerk reaction. All the employees at the dealerships in the various small towns in my area were sweating bullets during that that time of uncertainty of what was going to happen & I know many of those employees. People & businesses in the small towns those dealerships are in were extremely anxious knowing what effect the loss of those dealerships would have on their towns. Then there are the parts & other businesses who exist to supply the dealerships. Across the country that would have been a mind boggling number of companies gone & people out of work. I don’t believe the private sector could have or would have gotten things back up & running as quickly as the gov’t did. The private sector made up so many individual companies wouldn’t have been in a hurry to do anything until they saw profit in it. The financial well-being of this country is not on the top of the priority list.

Dave, you’re just a worthless sack of white, southern racist shit. You claim to have been opposed to Bush’s policies, but I don’t recall seeing you or any of your teabagger pals out protesting against massive federal encroachments on civil rights such as the PATRIOT act or massive, unfunded federal encroachments such as Medicare Part D or No Child Left Behind. Nope, you and the rest of your teabagger buddies didn’t say a word about any of that stuff. But all of a sudden a black man becomes President and you’re up in arms. You’re a lying sack of shit Dave. A stupid, angry, bigoted lying sack of shit who did nothing for eight years while Bush worked his ass off to destroy this country.

And what Dave, what do you think that the Republicans would do instead? If you weren’t so stupid (Why are white southern conservatives like you so Goddamned stupid? Is it the inbreeding? How many generations of brother-sister marriages are you descended from?) you might be aware of the fact that George W. Bush expanded the size of the government more than any other president than Lyndon Johnson. You might also be aware of the fact that after eight years of George W. Bush and a Republican House, Senate and Supreme Court that this country is farther in debt than it’s ever been. Do you think that Sarah Palin, John McCain, Mitt Romney or that good old Southern boy Mike Huckabee, who ought to be held as an accessory in the murder of four Washington state police officers, would somehow change that?

Jesus, I’m thinking of moving down South and setting up a business where I can take advantage of stupid punks like you. Taking your money would be easy, because let’s face it, you’re stupid, and it would prevent you from doing anything stupid with it.

Notice I did not say ‘no government services or taxation’. Some is appropriate. We can debate where the line should be. But tea party foes like to say stuff like ‘if you fire departments then you must be a socialist because fire departments are a public service’. The tea party movement did not spring up because fire departments, public education, student loans, and social security pensions existed because as a white man I benefit from these things.

Fix’t

The movement was a response to the aggressive doubling down on all fronts that has occurred since the Obama administration gave the green light to the democratic congress an uppity ni**er Democrat getting elected.

Fix’t. Because that’s what you really meant to say. You’re a racist shithead. Sorry, but claiming that you joined the tea party solely because the government was encroaching on civil liberties (Oh, and by the way, where were you guys when Bush signed the PATRIOT act into law?) and that the race of the President had nothing to do with it is kind of like a white southerner 45 years ago claiming that he joined the KKK because he was against Lyndon Johnson’s policies in Vietnam, and not because of the Civil Rights act of 1964.

I believe that free-market capitalism and a smaller dose of government services and taxation is more effective in achieving it than an economy with more restrictions and more command and control from the center as well as more taxation and income redistribution.

And as the last 8 years showed, THIS DOES NOT WORK IN REAL LIFE.

Free markets = corruption, fraud, waste

Smaller government services = destroying the social safety net, endangering the public

Smaller Taxation = bigger deficits!

Restrictions = RULES!

Taxation and Income Redistribution = Wealthy people paying their taxes!

My thoughts exactly. When I read Freidman’s column all I could think was that the guy has been to India one too many times and/or living in that huge house has really made him out of touch with what working men and women have to do.

Notice I did not say ‘no government services or taxation’. Some is appropriate. We can debate where the line should be. But tea party foes like to say stuff like ‘if you fire departments then you must be a soⅽⅰaⅼⅰst because fire departments are a public service’. The tea party movement did not spring up because fire departments, public education, student loans, and social security pensions existed because as a white man I benefit from these things.

Fix’t

The movement was a response to the aggressive doubling down on all fronts that has occurred since the Obama administration gave the green light to the democratic congress a ni**er got elected.

Fix’t.

Because that’s what you really meant to say. You’re a racist shithead. Sorry, but claiming that you joined the tea party solely because the government was encroaching on civil liberties (Oh, and by the way, where were you guys when Bush signed the PATRIOT act into law?) and that the race of the President had nothing to do with it is kind of like a white southerner 45 years ago claiming that he joined the KKK because he was against Lyndon Johnson’s policies in Vietnam, and not because of the Civil Rights act of 1964.

Guys like you and Dave are full of shit. You are, and history shows that you are. Have you ever heard of Barry Goldwater? Barry Goldwater ran as a conservative in 1964, a believer in reducing the size of government, in getting government off of the backs of American citizens. Barry really believed in this idea. So much so that during the 1964 campaign he went to Tennessee and said that the Tennessee Valley Authority was a waste of money and ought to be sold off to private investors. Now, did the stalwart white Southerners in Tennessee say “You’re right Barry, TVA is a waste of money. It’s a huge government suckhole and ought to be privatized and the government has no business generating electricity or providing flood control?”

Well people who aren’t completely retarded like you and DavethegayRepublicanSlaveinBoca know the answer to this. But I’ll fill you in. In November of 1964 the voters in Tennessee said “Fuck you! You’ll get our TVA when you pry them from our cold, dead fingers” and the state went overwhelmingly for Lyndon Johnson.

Now, in 1968 and 1972 when Nixon was running for President Tennessee went for Tricky Dick. Why? Well because Tricky Dick didn’t say that he was going to privatize the TVA, but he did talk about “states rights” and “law and order” and all of the racist Southern Democrats like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms all of a sudden joined the Republican party. In 1972, after Nixon, a Republican, had imposed wage-price controls, signed the EPA into law and run up such a massive deficit that the US was forced off of the gold standard did white southerners see the light and say “Enough, we’ve had it with having the government on our backs! We’ve had it with massive deficits. We’ve had it with wage and price controls that tell us how much pay we can ask for and how much we can sell our products for. We’ve had it with new government agencies like the EPA!” Hell no, they voted for him again because he kept blowing that racist dogwhistle, and he kept the money flowing to government programs that benefitted white people all the while talking about how welfare was a bad thing.

Let’s face it, guys like you and Dave love getting money from the government. You love seeing other people pay taxes so that the government can give you things. You only get pissed off when you think that the government is taking money from you to give it to those you find unworthy (you know, blacks and mexicans). And just how much have your taxes gone up under the Obama administration? I’m interested in knowing? If you’re making less than 250k a year they haven’t. What laws has President Obama signed that are as much of a threat to our civil liberties as the PATRIOT act? What massively ineffective government bureaucracies like the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA has the Obama administration created?

if you want to provide cheap healthcare to your neighbors you are free to do it out of your own resources.

Yes, and the instrument we use to accomplish that is called the United States Government. Because that is the most effective way of providing that particular service, as shown by every other affluent country in the world, including those that “haven’t failed yet” according to you.

Do you really think that our little neighborhood association is going to have the economies of scale that a nationwide insurance exchange will have?

But, more broadly, why do you and the rest of the Right resist the idea of government by the people, of the people, for the people? You treat our republic–for which millions of Americans fought and died–as the enemy. Do you question the idea of democracy itself? Sure, I would prefer a small democracy to a large one. But I’ll take a big democracy over a small dictatorship any day. And conservatives have been fighting for little dictatorships since before the Civil War.

You rail at government power, but you carefully ignore the concentration of corporate power. Why do you prefer corporate masters? Their rule has failed every bit as much as those of the workers’ dictatorships. This country has to move on.

@Citizen_X:
Those spaghetti dinner/benefits they have here for people suffering from illness or accidents with mounting medical bills are pretty cheap..usually no more than $10 ahead. Oh, wait, that’s not what futile was talking about.

The tea party movement did not spring up because fire departments, public education, student loans, and social security pensions existed. The movement was a response to the aggressive doubling down on all fronts that has occurred since the Obama administration gave the green light to the democratic congress.
I believe that when individuals make choices with their own time and money the outcome is better than when some central body takes their money and (and by association the time they spent earning it) decides how to spend it for them. Sure some people make poor decisions with their own time and money. In the same manner, governments sometimes make poor decisions with the time and money they are charged with. I believe that on aggregate the better outcome comes from individuals making choices. The reason is that they are closer to the outcome; they can sense it sooner and self-correct sooner. A giant government behemoth with it’s head far removed from it’s hands can not react and change course quickly. Also, self-interest exists in human beings. Self-interest of public officials works against the interest of the individuals in the public. But self-interest of individuals in the public works for them.
During the last 120 years there have been a large number of national experiments with large government sectors. On the extreme edge you’ve had communist countries with all-encompassing public sectors. These have ALL failed. Yes, even the stragglers like cuba and north korea are failures. China is nominally a communist country which has boomed only since it opened itself up to private property and enterprise. There are a large number of social democractic states in europe that have not failed. The standard of living is high in many of them. People point to those and say: ‘see, that is what I want. It works there.’ My answer is that it just hasn’t failed there yet. This is something that we can debate.

Do you realize how much you sound like a communist? Seriously, you sound like hard core communist when you say this. The communists used to say that the western democracies were going to fail, that any day now they would fall and that communist regimes would rise in their place. They said this in 1930. They said this in 1940. They said it in 1950, 1960, 1970 and 1980. They said it right up to the end. And whenever someone said “Hmmmm, doesn’t look like they’ve failed yet the commissars would reply. ‘They haven’t failed yet, but any day now, any day now Comrade'”.

You’re really quite stupid. Debate requires honesty and an open mind, you don’t have one. Your response to the statement that these countries haven’t failed is to say that these countries haven’t failed yet. Again, you’re like a communist when you say this. When people in the North Korea or Cuba say “Hey, communism sucks, it’s failed, look at how fucked up our country is” the commissars reply “No comrade, communism hasn’t failed, it just hasn’t succeeded yet”.

I wonder why an american individual (with an yearning for european style social democracy) would want to give up his resources and put them in the hands of a bureaucrat rather than freely associate with others and create the desired good in some private association. I mean, if you want to provide cheap healthcare to your neighbors you are free to do it out of your own resources. Why is it that instead of doing your project privately by free association with others, you want government to do your project? Isn’t it because you want to control the actions and resources of others and you can only achieve that through governmental authority? If so, you sir, are a thief. If you can’t convince your neighbor to join you in your enterprise of his own free will then it is probably not worth doing. You have no business forcing him to do it via governmentally applied duress.

I wonder why an american individual (with an yearning for european style social democracy) would want to give up his resources and put them in the hands of a bureaucrat rather than freely associate with others and create the desired good in some private association. I mean, if you want to provide cheap healthcare fire departments, public education, student loans, and social security pensions to your neighbors you are free to do it out of your own resources. Why aren’t you complaining about the government providing these services? Isn’t it because you’re a racist and a hypocrite who doesn’t mind having other people’s money taken from them when its used to pay for programs and projects that he benefits from.

To summarize, I want to be free to live my life in peace with my own resources and I’ll let you live your life in peace with yours. what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine too.

Fix’t

I did not strongly protest taxation and government services when they were less than 20% of gdp but I am now because this current president/congress are going too far.

So let’s see if I have this straight. Government is theft, except for fire departments, social security, student loans and public education and except when it’s less than 20 percent of the GDP or health care is involved or a black guy is president.

It may not be Instant, but it sounds like Karma.
__
(Side note: Which, I have discovered, sometimes does exist. I offer the story of Thomas Midgley, Jr
__
You just can’t make this stuff up.

From the fine page at Wikipedia.

In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio which left him severely disabled. This led him to devise an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. This system was the eventual cause of his death when he was accidentally entangled in the ropes of this device and died of strangulation at the age of 55

If you change the word ‘begging’ to ‘DEMANDING’ I could agree with that sentence without reservation.

There’s a certain amount of elitism that goes with the idea of letting the banks and auto industry crash because of management mistakes. The mistakes were made by the few at the top, but the suffering happens at the bottom among the innocent. The country is spooked by 10% unemployment. What would it be like if unemployment were 15% or 20% or more?

Free market ideology works far better in an ivory tower than it does in the real world.

I know a few people who are not registered with any party and vote for whoever they think is best.

Me too. They’re different. The reason it became a problem was because tea partiers kept insisting they were not in fact Republicans. Of course they are. They attend rallies with the likes of Michelle Bachman, and her single biggest applause line is “take back the House!”
Unless she talking about 40 Independents “taking back the House” they’re Republicans.
Republican law-makers vote as a bloc. The idea that there is going to be this massive change to newly independent Tea Party Republicans, and then those “other” Republicans, is just insulting to anyone of average intelligence.
The Tea party candidates will march in lock-step with the rest of the zombies, once they’re in. There will be some charismatic insane leader (Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich) and they’ll all be behind him.

The “Tea Party” is the same party that thinks Global Warming is a hoax, and not only that, will go out of their way to drive SUV’s and turn on as many lights as possible during Earth Day/Hour for no other reason than they hope it will piss off liberals.

The Mustache of Understanding apparently doesn’t understand shit about who these people really are.

@Futile attempt at reason:
Teeing off of Wiley Coyote’s comments, much of the Tea Party and modern conservative movement sounds like Communist diatribes of the 1970’s when I came of age.

What they have in common is the pursuit of pure abstract ideology; for the Communists, total government control was always and eveywhere the perfect solution; for the Tea Partiers, the Free Market is invoked with the same sort of reverent, uncritical awe.

Examples- the Free Market is invoked as the solution to health care; despite the fact that the basic preconditions of a free market like competition, ability to leave or enter the market, equality of bargaining are all missing. No one can bargain as a peer with Wellpoint, no one can freely choose not to buy health care, and for most Americans, you have one, maybe two companies from which to choose.

But never mind- the Free Market is the solution. Always. Everywhere.

Secondly, the Tea Partier see every issue, every single problem as an epic clash of Capitali-sm Vs. Social-ism.

There is no middle ground, no mixed economy of public and private initiatives, there is only Free Market vs KOMMUN-ism.

This is why back when I was a conservative, we used to mock and ridicule the real Marx-ists who did that- every issue, down to fixing potholes on Main Street was a battle between bootlicking capitalists and The People.

There is a perfectly good debate to be had about the size and scope of government vs the private sector- but as long as you are unable to see anything other than the Free Market as the end of civilization as we know it, that debate won’t happen.

#162 “There is a perfectly good debate to be had about the size and scope of government vs the private sector- but as long as you are unable to see anything other than the Free Market as the end of civilization as we know it, that debate won’t happen.”

What does that mean? Start with the fact that there is no actual “Tea Party” in any meaningful sense: it just doesn’t exist in the same sense that the Republican and Democratic Parties do. As far as I can tell, it’s mostly a not very well organized bunch of people who go to protests and rallies, where they express a range of not very coherent views.

It is undeniable that some of those views are racist and loathesome: for example, the Obama witch-doctor posters, Glenn Beck accusing Obama of having a “deep-seated hatred of white people,” and other overtly racist views.

I’m not attributing those views to you, but you cannot deny that some other “tea partiers” hold them. It is an observable fact that some of them do. I have to wonder why anyone would want to make common cause with those who express these views, and you cannot avoid being judged in part by the company you choose to keep.

Some other “tea partiers” implicitly and explicitly threaten political violence, with language like “if Brown can’t stop it a Browning can,” all the brandishing of weapons, and so on, which is every bit as beyond the pale as the racism that some other “tea partiers” express.

You may not hold these views yourself, but for all I know, you may, or you may at least sympathize with them. You have, after all, chosen to identify yourself as being part of a group that includes some members who clearly do hold these views.

Some “tea partier” views are so divorced from reality that they’re delusional: birthers, death panels, all the incoherent talk about Marxism and Fascism, etc. You can claim that you don’t hold those views yourself, but you cannot deny that some other “tea partiers” manifestly do.

It should come as no surprise that a great many people are unimpressed by and unadmiring of your choice to identify yourself as being part of this group, or that some people might occasionally wonder whether you might hold views that you’re not owning up to.

And some “tea partier” stuff is just strange. Some of this is silly and harmless enough, like dressing up in 18th-century costumes, but all the sexualized language about ramming things down people’s throats, being made to “bend over,” etc., is more deeply weird, and to a great many people, unappealing, to say the least.

“I believe…”

I’m going to guess that this is not an idea you’ve encountered very often, but I care very little about what people say they believe. I care about what they do.

All I know about what you’ve done is that you have chosen to identify yourself as being, in at least some sense, a member of a group that is undeniably partly racist, partly violent, and partly delusional. It’s beyond me why you would want to do that, at least for any reason that can be attributed to good will, good faith, or a firm grip on reality.

Well, great! If we could talk about health care reform, or financial reform, or immigration reform without anyone talking about So-shul-ism, I would love to chat.

But that isn’t what i see from the Tea Party; what I see- not from the occasional straggler or isolated nutjob, but what I see from the Dick Army/ Michelle Bachman/ FreedomWorks folks, the ones who hold the mike and speak, are wild fearful references to Obama wanting to destroy America.

What I see from the Tea Party is tribalism, not dry policy disputes about deficits and taxation, but a general inchoate rage at some dark force that threatens (their) America.

Here’s Tea Party member Dave in Boca on the independence of the Tea Party from the Republican Party:

Maybe if you weren’t such a whore, you’d check out Pew who notices that the generic Dem pct. went DOWN from 51% to 46% in the last six months while the generic GOP went UP from 39% to 45% during the same period.

I don’t mind at all that the base of the Republican Party has a catchy new name. It was clever. They needed a new name, and the colorful costumes and “movement” idea certainly garnered a lot of media attention.

I just wish they’d quit lying about what they are. The Republican base.

I believe that when individuals make choices with their own time and money the outcome is better than when some central body takes their money and (and by association the time they spent earning it) decides how to spend it for them. Sure some people make poor decisions with their own time and money. In the same manner, governments sometimes make poor decisions with the time and money they are charged with. I believe that on aggregate the better outcome comes from individuals making choices. The reason is that they are closer to the outcome; they can sense it sooner and self-correct sooner. A giant government behemoth with it’s head far removed from it’s hands can not react and change course quickly. Also, self-interest exists in human beings. Self-interest of public officials works against the interest of the individuals in the public. But self-interest of individuals in the public works for them.

In other words, there are no economies of scale and the free market works best even in the case of limited commodities, like electricity and water.

“In my opinion, the government should have let the banking system, wall street, chrysler, and gm crash. The individuals who invest in and control and loaned to those institutions should have been allowed to reap the harvest of their decisions.”

So you would have been happy if one day in November of 2008 you went to an ATM and it said your checking account ws gone.

I believe that when individuals make choices with their own time and money the outcome is better than when some central body takes their money and (and by association the time they spent earning it) decides how to spend it for them. Sure some people make poor decisions with their own time and money. In the same manner, governments sometimes make poor decisions with the time and money they are charged with. I believe that on aggregate the better outcome comes from individuals making choices. The reason is that they are closer to the outcome; they can sense it sooner and self-correct sooner. A giant government behemoth with it’s head far removed from it’s hands can not react and change course quickly. Also, self-interest exists in human beings. Self-interest of public officials works against the interest of the individuals in the public. But self-interest of individuals in the public works for them.

In other words, there are no economies of scale and the free market works best even in the case of limited commodities, like electricity and water.

“In my opinion, the government should have let the banking system, wall street, chrysler, and gm crash. The individuals who invest in and control and loaned to those institutions should have been allowed to reap the harvest of their decisions.”

So you would have been happy if one day in November of 2008 you went to an ATM and it said your checking account ws gone.

Government is theft, except for fire departments, social security, student loans and public education and except when it’s less than 20 percent of the GDP or health care is involved or a black guy is president.

And the military. Teabaggers never suggest cutting our hideously bloated military budget when they start pearl-clutching over the deficit, another sign that like the GOP, they don’t really give a fuck about the deficit.

Teabaggers never suggest cutting our hideously bloated military budget when they start pearl-clutching over the deficit, another sign that like the GOP, they don’t really give a fuck about the deficit.

Two things the teabaggers can’t get enough of are Pentagon waste and NASA. They want to go back to the moon and on to Mars, presumably because they hope there won’t be any Little Green Black or Brown Men there. It’s part of their Manifest Destiny fetish, and wars are always an appropriate exercise of Federal authority.

While pimping his book, Karl Rove recently claimed invading Iraq was justified if it prevented an arms race between them and the Iranians.

To summarize, I want to be free to live my life in peace with my own resources and I’ll let you live your life in peace with yours.

And if some people don’t have resources, what happens to them? Do you just look the other way while they suffer and die because to care about them would threaten your ability to be free to live your life in peace with your own resources?

I think a futile attempt at reason is aptly named. Anyone beyond their teenage fandom of Dagney Taggart and fantasy life as John Galt and who has a few functioning neurons knows that libertarianism is a joke in exactly the same way as communism is because neither one takes into account the reality of being human. It’s all about some fantasy world where they see themselves as some sort of heroic free market studs who are so above the hoi polloi who sit around all day doing nothing but evilly planning to steal their manly essence– their cash. They have no idea how hard someone like my dad worked and how little he had to show for it because of assholes like that. We’ve all heard the Teabagger heroes talk about the dead WVA miners as being deserving of their fate for just being miners or for “choosing” to work in an unsafe, non-union mine even though the only thing they hate more than the poor are the unions that are a force for alleviating poverty and encouraging upward mobility. They are emotionally and intellectually stuck in spoiled adolescence. If they want to see how great their “ideas” are, they could go to Somalia. Or they could stay right here in America and check out the glibertarian Christianist paradise of Colorado Springs, CO. Nice city they had there. Now? Not so much.

The tea party movement did not spring up because fire departments, public education, student loans, and social security pensions existed. The movement was a response to the aggressive doubling down on all fronts that has occurred since the Obama administration gave the green light to the democratic congress.

No doubling down under Bush? Hmmmm, you expect us to take this seriously? Are you not aware of the amount of money that was thrown away during the Bush years?

Boca Raton SUCKS. Most boring, manicured hell-hole I have ever had the non-pleasure of stopping in. Pity Dave in Boca – the Teaparty has given his life in permanent suburban hell meaning and I am sure he loves to rail about something other than his HOA fees going up.

No, rice in sushi is fine for others, I just don’t like the taste of it personally. I don’t mind that others like it, and I can support their wish to have it available, I just don’t partake myself.

That said, I do eat rice on other things, it’s the taste of it in sushi that I don’t like. It tastes different in sushi (must be some seasoning or other that they add in, it leaves a weird aftertaste in my mouth).

They weren’t around protesting during the Bush years BECAUSE THE TEA PARTY IS REPUBLICANS.

Geez… I guess you weren’t paying attention. Have you heard of Pork Busters? The Tea Party actually got off the ground during his admin in response to deficit spending and because of the bailout.

The Won’s admin and this congress, has just taken out of control spending and government growth, to stratospheric new heights that will binds us, our children and grandchildren as well as our economy to a long painful decline.

[…] Cole know the internet exists? By datechguy Apparently not because he makes the following statement: They weren’t around protesting during the Bush years BECAUSE THE TEA PARTY IS REPUBLICANS. They […]

The Won’s admin and this congress, has just taken out of control spending and government growth, to stratospheric new heights that will binds us, our children and grandchildren as well as our economy to a long painful decline.

Really? Where? The CBO determined that HCR Act will pay for itself and reduce the budget. The bailed out banks and car companies are paying (or have paid) back their bailout money. So where is this out of control spending? Name the bill, please.

The Won’s admin and this congress, has just taken out of control spending and government growth, to stratospheric new heights that will binds us, our children and grandchildren as well as our economy to a long painful decline.

First, dimwit, please point me to large, organized protests of the W/Cheney administration’s tax cuts, wars, and selling of government functions to their cronies in the private sector. All covered by a compliant media, with FOX News and Dick Armey’s astroturfers footing the bill. I never saw a single one. None.

Second, this president has done more to reign in the profligate spending and crony capitalism that has run rampant for at least the past 3 decades than anyone other than Bill Clinton, who comes in a distant second simply because he has to take some blame for the deregulation and inability to get health care reform done that are large factors in our current federal fiscal situation.

And, FYI, calling the president “the Won” tells me everything I need to know about what biased idiot you are. You are either a PUMA or a wingnut, neither of whom need be taken seriously by anyone with a modicum of intelligence. When you are out there demonstrating in front of Goldman Sachs or when you are calling for a 50% cut in the DoD budget, we’ll talk about how fiscally concerned you are. Until then, STFU.

There is a safety net in this country. There is free education, food aid, housing aid, medicaid, charitable institutions, and many other forms of aid. I suppose we can have a debate on how high the safety net should be. Should the safety net be survival level or a comfortable level?

There are plenty of immigrants who come to this country with little or nothing who thrive. I guess there are ones who don’t thrive as well. There are natives who start with little or nothing who thrive as well as ones who don’t thrive. Every political/economic system has some who don’t thrive. If you’re going to claim that the fact that some don’t thrive is evidence that the system is inferior then I’d like to see some comparative statistics on the matter.

Our system doesn’t look the other way while ‘they suffer and die’. As I’ve said there is a safety net. I personally don’t look the other way while ‘they suffer and die’ either. I have devoted at least 15% of my gross income to charitable causes for many years. I’ve sponsored a poor immigrant egyptian family, paid college tuition for an ethiopian who is headed for medical school, I build affordable housing, and many other things.

I have not argued for no safety net. I have had an issue with the wild spending on all fronts by the government. And yes, I was not pleased with the spending during Bush’s years. But we had an election and got rid of him. All the world was supposed to be sweetly scented after he left. But now we are getting double the deficits. It’s nuts.

some of the initial quote of Little Dreamer is missing. I meant to quote this:

“And if some people don’t have resources, what happens to them? Do you just look the other way while they suffer and die because to care about them would threaten your ability to be free to live your life in peace with your own resources?
Even Jesus fed the poor with fish and bread. Do you?
Are you not your brother’s keeper?”

george #198 says “We already spend as much on our defense as the rest of the world combined. Why? And I haven’t met a tea bagger who has a problem with it.”

I personally think we should downsize our military and bring it back within our own borders. I’d continue to spend on missile defenses, drones and other stuff that would keep us effective but I don’t think we should be the world’s policeman.

And for the record, I don’t care who people have sex with, or who they marry, or how many abortions they have. That is their won business, not mine.

There are 2 arguments to be made for not drastically downsizing our military at this time.

1. Think of it as a jobs program that has Republican support. The military industrial complex employees a lot of people and provides an exit for lower income high school graduates. Just as we are climbing out of our depression is not a time to tinker.

2. Our global military presence does provide a level of world wide stability. True it is less than it was, but without another government picking up the slack that stability will decrease, and so will trade.

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